Archive: Plato's Republic
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What is Plato’s central question about justice in the Republic?
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This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. For this week's summer special from the great archive of In Our Time, I've chosen Plato's Republic, whose claim to be the foundation text of Western philosophy is arguably stronger than all its competitors. What I find extraordinary about the Republic is how it moves seamlessly from the concrete political conditions of Athens in the 4th century BCE to more abstract concepts regarding justice or truth, and then on to allegory, which touches upon perception, art, knowledge and belief.
I found it particularly helpful in understanding the deep reservations which Plato expressed about democracy as a system, albeit one which took a rather different form from democracies of today. In his view, democracy teeters on the edge of tyranny, which struck me as similar to the thinking of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, one of the first in our times that I recorded – although I think Mill was more sceptical about the great wisdom of philosophers, which Plato seems to admire. It's the discussion on Plato's cave that I found most illuminating. Here people are bound at the neck and the feet, only able to perceive shadows cast by objects which others are parading around behind them. a useful reminder of the vast areas of knowledge which elude us as individuals, but which in our time, in its own modest fashion, seeks to address.
Hello. Plato's
Republic, written around 380 BC, explores whether it's always better to be just than unjust and is seen as a cornerstone of Western philosophy. It takes the form of a dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates and his companions and is set around 430 BC, since when Athens had teetered between tyranny and direct democracy and, as a democracy, had put Socrates to death. One companion argues that we would all behave unjustly if we could get away with it. To address this, Socrates imagines what a perfectly just city would be like and applies lessons from that to the individual soul. And if the soul is best ruled by reason, he argues the city would be best ruled by philosophers. With me to discuss Plato's Republic are Angela Hobbes, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield,
M.M. McCabe, Professor of Ancient Philosophy, Emerita at King's College London, and James Warren, a fellow of Corpus Christi College and a reader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. James Warren, what was the political situation in Athens when Plato was writing The Republic?
He's writing the Republic, as you said, in the first quarter of the 4th century BC. Athens at this point is a direct democracy, which means every citizen is fully involved in directly
voting. Every male, free man. Yeah,
citizens mean adult, free-born males. So it's an independent city-state ruled in this direct democratic way. It hasn't always been so. In the period between the dramatic date of this dialogue and when it's written, Athens had gone through upheavals at the end of a long war and had gone through a period of an oligarchic coup. in around 404, quite a brutal regime, and then democracy was restored. And then also the important date to remember in the intervening period between the composition and dramatic date is the execution of Socrates right at the end of the 5th century BC.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is Plato’s central question about justice in the Republic?
0:00–10:36
2
Why does Plato compare the city‑state to the individual soul?
10:36–18:55
3
How did the political turmoil of 4th‑century BC Athens shape Plato’s ideas?
18:55–24:40
4
How does Plato justify philosopher‑rulers and their education?
24:40–31:58
5
How does the Ring of Gyges story illustrate the problem of injustice?
31:58–45:47
6
What challenge does Thrasymachus pose to Socrates and how is it answered?
45:47–51:43
7
What is the significance of the Allegory of the Cave for knowledge and politics?
51:43–54:09